ABA Section of Business Law

How You Can Help:

Volunteer your time

Provide Office Space or Equipment

Bankruptcy Working Group

Community Development and Housing Working Group

Debt Deferment Working Group

Small Business Working Group

As you are all hopefully aware, the American Bar Association has been quick to respond to the human catastrophe wrought by Hurricane Katrina on the people of the Gulf Coast. The Section of Business Law is a full participant in this effort and I hope that you will be able to help us as we work to bring aid and relief to those affected by this tragedy.

In response to a call from ABA President Michael Greco, I have named Myles Lynk as our Section's representative on the ABA Hurricane Katrina Task Force. This Task Force will assume primary responsibility for developing and coordinating the Association's ongoing relief efforts.

There are ways in which you can immediately participate in the relief effort. The Section will be launching a portal page on our website which will house all resources that may be of assistance to individuals or businesses struggling to return to some semblance of normalcy over the coming months. If you or your firm have existing resources that could be used in the launch of the portal page, please forward actual materials or at least the reference and location of such materials to Robert Rupp (ruppr@staff.abanet.org) as soon as possible, including copyright permission if applicable.

For those of you that are members of a committee I would also encourage you to consider your committee's substantive area of law and whether it would be appropriate for your committee to initiate a special project with the goal of generating a useful resource that could be incorporated into the Section's hurricane relief project. All committee chairs have been instructed to be thinking of such projects and I am certain your chair would welcome any suggestion.

Finally, our Section is coordinating the full ABA Hurricane Relief Database. This database will be used as the central gathering point for attorneys wishing to aid victims by serving on pro bono projects. The Section's Committee on Pro Bono is working closely with the ABA Center for Pro Bono and will be using this database to call on volunteers as projects get up and running and needs become clear. It is important to note two points about the business law pro bono outreach. First, displaced residents have now been evacuated to over 27 states, so their needs will have to be met by pro bono projects across the nation. It is critical that we have a broad, national database from which to draw when called on by our pro bono partners. Second, the relief effort will be a campaign over many months and possibly years. If you volunteer today, you may not be called on for some time, but that in no way diminishes your generosity or our need for your help. It is critical that we have capable and willing volunteers when we are called upon by the pro bono projects to provide resources, so please take a moment, if at all possible, and enter your information into the Hurricane Katrina Legal Assistance Database.

The center for information on all of these efforts is www.abanet.org/katrina. If you have any questions regarding the Section's relief efforts, you can e-mail the Section's Associate Director, Robert Rupp (ruppr@staff.abanet.org), who is coordinating and staffing our relief-related projects.